Joe Queenan on the Need for a New Man Bag

For the past 20 years, I have carried a small, battered, ratty-looking black shoulder bag wherever I go. Dismissing attaché cases as clumsy and impractical and professionally inappropriate—satirists do not carry attaché cases—I have stuck with that shoulder bag, even though friends and construction workers and even the occasional chatty vagrant have sometimes derisively referred to it as a handbag or even a purse.

Throughout this period, I have never fired back, "No, it's a satchel!" Or, "No, it's a messenger bag!" Or, "No, it's a prospector's field bag, much as was used in the 19th century during the California Gold Rush!" Or, "Oh, yeah? Well, Indiana Jones carries one!"

No, I have simply suffered the abuse in silence. That's because I know that shoulder bags do look like handbags and do look kind of stupid. I have never lied to myself or others about that dumb little bag. It's just that I can carry a lot of stuff in it—books, pens, notebooks, newspapers, an iPod, headphones, coins—and no one has ever come up with a suitable alternative.

Lately, men of all ages are carrying—more like "wearing"—backpacks to the office. Sometimes really big backpacks. This is making a bad situation worse. Just like commuters who wear baseball caps and sneakers with their Brooks Brothers suits, a backpack makes a grown man look ridiculous. Unless the man happens to be scaling Mount Everest.

A backpack worn with office attire makes you look like a little kid. It makes it look like you're carrying Intermediate Spanish or "The Scarlet Letter" inside your book bag. It makes you look dumpy. It makes you look like a big goof. It makes you look like your mommy dressed you and said, "Look both ways before crossing the busy street, sweetie."

People have a right to look like big goofs. They have a right to look like their mommies just dressed them. But it doesn't help our national image. It makes us look puny. Vladimir Putin's guys don't wear backpacks. Neither do those Eastern European gangsters who keep hacking into U.S. databases. Narcotraffickers never wear backpacks.

It is often said that those whom the gods would destroy, they first make ridiculous. Well, they do it in stages. They start out with the reversed baseball cap on the lawyer with the three-piece suit and the $3,500 shoes. Then they move on to the red Chuck Taylors with the elegant Burberry jacket. Then they move in for the kill with the sartorial coup de grace: the prepubescent backpack with the $1,800 belted trench coat. Maybe with a teddy bear sticking out the back. The gods will stop at nothing. The gods, by the way, do not wear backpacks.

Men like to imagine themselves as movie stars. Would Bogie wear a backpack with his trench coat and natty fedora?
Clint Eastwood
?
Sean Connery
? Denzel? Would Rocky wear a backpack? Wolverine? The Dark Knight? I think not. How would
Cary Grant
look hanging off the face of Mount Rushmore with a backpack draped over his shoulders? Or Braveheart, with a blue face and a plaid backpack? Nope, backpacks are a Peter Parker personal appurtenance.

I sometimes think of famous historical figures who would have slit their wrists rather than wear a backpack to work.
Winston Churchill.
Nathan Hale.
William Tecumseh
Sherman. Tecumseh himself.

If
David Farragut
had said, "Damn the torpedoes; full speed ahead," while wearing a backpack, his troops would not have damned the torpedoes and would not have gone full speed ahead. They would have run home to their mommies.

Somebody needs to get cracking on this problem. Like right away. Shoulder bags look stupid. I'll be the first to admit it. So do messenger bags, canvas bags and backpacks. Attaché cases look and are stupid. It's enough to make you want to quit work entirely and stay home for the rest of your life. What kind of solution is that?